For local development I’m running a number of microservices using docker compose just as support for the service I’m currently working at, but most of the time I do not want to run all of them.

To achieve this I use profiles in the service definition. Most of the services has a dependency on for example a database service. The problem is though that using profiles is disables the possibility to use depends_on, and instead the idea seems to be that profiles should be shared by services that depend on each other, but that gives a symmetrical dependency unlike the asymmetrical dependency that depends_on gives.

Simplified I have this:

services:
  postgres:
    profiles:
      - postgres
      - base
  redis:
    profiles:
      - redis
      - base
  app1:
    depends_on:
      - postgres
    profiles:
      - app1
  app2:
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - base
    profiles:
      - app2

Running just app1 results in this:

> docker compose --profile registry up
service "dreams-registry" depends on undefined service "postgres": invalid compose project

So how can I now start app2 and also have it automatically postgres and redis, but without starting app1 too?

I don’t really understand why profiles should replace service names and depends_on, seems like those things could coexist.